Westfield put on a shooting clinic Friday afternoon at Gary Kehler Stadium, where the Blue Devils took on Bergen Tech. Westfield had captured the No. 1 seed in the North, Group 4 sectional tournament, allowing it to take on lower-seeded teams, such as No. 16 Bergen Tech.
Within the first eight minutes of the game, Westfield was up 7-0, and the first two goals were courtesy of Ryan Waldman. Cody Lam calmly cradled the ball behind the goal, where he found a wide-open Waldman cutting toward the net to finish for the Blue Devils, putting them up 1-0 just over a minute into the game.
From there, the Blue Devils kept rolling, and by the end of the first quarter it was 8-0. By the end of the game Westfield had 14 different goal scorers who put away 20 goals in total on the way to a 20-1 victory. The leading scorer of the day would be Waldman, who finished with 4 goals.
However, one of the goals that captured the most attention from the crowd came from Dan Hanlon. For the fourth goal of the game, Hanlon stuck a speedy long distance shot that snuck into the upper corner.
“The offense gave me a lot of opportunities because the defense overplayed them, so they set me up,” said Hanlon.
Westfield wasn’t just dominating on the offensive end, but took over defensively as well. Three different goalkeepers stepped into the net for Westfield, and only one goal was let in throughout the entire game, which came midway through the third quarter. This one magical goal that Bergen Tech was able to get off even caused the Westfield fans to erupt into cheers, causing the Bergen Tech goalscorer to take a bow.
“Our defense did a really good job of communicating today, especially for the first half of the game,” said Hanlon.
Westfield displayed its superiority on all skill levels and did not shy away for a single second. “We told [the team], ‘You have to play real, shoot real, no matter who the opponent is,” said head coach William Wertheimer. Westfield took this statement and ran with it as it fired on all cylinders, barely giving Bergen Tech any room to breathe.
The top-seeded Blue Devils have the privilege of facing teams similar to the level of Bergen Tech in the first few rounds of the sectional tournament as a result of their seed. “The No. 1 seed means that we don’t face seeds 2 or 3, which, Bridgewater is a very strong team and Ridgewood is a very strong team and they gotta face each other hopefully before they face us,” said Wertheimer. “So the No. 1 seed is big.”
The Blue Devils advance to the quarterfinals, where they will take on No. 8 seed Livingston, which has a record of 10-9. Westfield advances its own record to 10-6 after Friday’s win.
“We are going to forget about this game and focus on the big game coming up,” said Hanlon.
